Public health, racial/ethnic disparities in health and social determinants of health, social policy and health

Profile

Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is Samuel F. and Rose B. Gingold Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, and Director of the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. From 1998 to 2011, she was a faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health (1998-2009) and Northeastern University (2009-2011). She is Project Director for diversitydata.org, an indicator project on racial/ethnic equity in U.S. metropolitan areas, and for diversitydatakids.org, a comprehensive database of indicators on child wellbeing and opportunity by race/ethnicity across multiple sectors (e.g., education, health, neighborhoods) and geographies. Diversitydatakids.org also incorporates systematic reviews and indicators of policies that may help improve the lives of vulnerable children and promote child equity. The diversitydata projects are supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Acevedo-Garcia is also a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Housing and Families with Children. Her recent professional activities include invited presentations at the HUD/MacArthur Foundation “How Housing Matters” Conference (2011, 2012), and at the White House conference on the Future of Rental Housing Policy (2010). She served on two national expert panels convened by the Centers for Disease Control (Housing and Health, and Social Determinants of Health), and on the expert panel for the award-winning PBS documentary series “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick?” She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and of the journal Social Problems. She also serves on the Social Science Advisory Board of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and the National Coalition on School Diversity. She has served on the board of directors for the Fair Housing Center for Greater Boston, and the Committee on the Analysis on Impediments to Fair Housing (Boston Office for Civil Rights). Her research focuses on the social determinants (e.g. residential segregation, immigrant adaptation) of racial/ethnic health disparities; the role of social policies (e.g. housing policies, immigrant policies) in reducing those disparities; and the health and well-being of children with special needs. She received her B.A. in public administration from El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico City), and her MPA-URP and Ph.D. in Public Policy with a concentration in Demography from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Courses Taught

HS

324a

Social Experimentation in Child, Youth and Family Policymaking

HS

602c

Children, Youth, and Families Doctoral Seminar

Awards and Honors

One of the top 20 most-read papers in Health Affairs for 2008. Citation: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Theresa L. Osypuk, Nancy McArdle, and David Williams. (2008) “Towards a Policy Relevant Analysis of Geographic and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Child Healt
(2009)

Harvard School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Citation
(2008)

Harvard School of Public Health Mentoring Award
(2003)

Charles Westoff Prize for Excellence in Demographic Research (awarded for dissertation research)
(1996)